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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28269417">calico effect</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/akc/pseuds/akc'>akc</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Persona 5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cats, Domestic, Established Relationship, Excessive Napping, Fluff, M/M, Post-Persona 5: The Royal</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:20:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,461</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28269417</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/akc/pseuds/akc</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Hey,” Ren says, and he’s holding a full-sized cat in his arms. It’s a beautiful calico color, and there’s a tiny collar with a little bell hanging around its neck. “How was work?”</p>
<p>“Fine.” Goro makes a face. “Why is that in your arms.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>180</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>calico effect</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>in an effort to write fic that isn't constantly more than 10k words of angst, i wrote this. also because i miss my cats.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The issue with college classes, Goro thinks to himself, is that he has to go to them. He doesn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>hate</span>
  </em>
  <span> going to class, per se, but he hates waking up for them in the morning, and he hates having to take the train to go to them because he hates standing on the train because he hates the way that people bump into him. And he also hates that classes are boring sometimes, and that he’s always being handed one million assignments every week. He hates being overworked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But again, Goro doesn’t hate classes. Probably. He simply has an extremely strong distaste for them, and an especially strong distaste on the days where he has to go to work afterwards. Work isn’t even that bad—he works in a small record shop that gets about fifty customers per day. How the place continues to stay open is a complete mystery to him, but the manager never seems to have any complaints about business, so Goro has made the executive decision to not ask about it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But again, work isn’t bad. He doesn’t have to do much and usually has time to work on assignments while he’s there. It’s just the fact that after an exhausting day of classes, he can’t go home and crawl underneath the kotatsu for a few hours until he’s forced to actually get a substantial amount of work done. In other words: he can’t take a heavy nap disguised as him just “laying down to rest.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And speaking of work—his shift has just ended. He’s the closing shift today, which always sucks, and he’s spent the last thirty minutes cleaning everything up and handling the register and checking the stock for the few records that were sold today. The only thing on his mind is the fact that when he gets home, he’s going to be able to shower and sit down. Ren will probably have made him dinner, too, which is nice.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He slings his bag over his shoulder and shuts the door to the shop before locking it up and slipping the key into his bag. From here, it takes him about twenty minutes to get home, so long as the trains are on time. Goro knows this for a fact because he’s timed how long it takes to get from work to his apartment, and it always ends up being around twenty minutes. Neuroticism is handy in that kind of way.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The trains are busy as usual, though, and Goro can feel his eye twitch when two people shove themselves up against him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Walking to the apartment is quiet, save for the sound of the train far in the background. He heads into the lobby, takes the elevator up to the fifth floor—he has to smack the fifth floor button about three times because it’s sticky—and then exits into the hallway. The apartment is the very first door on the left, which is both convenient as well as paranoia-inducing. Pros and cons.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He swipes his card, punches in the code, and opens up the door. Immediately his nose is impaled with the scent of some sort of lemon cookie candle.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Goro gets his shoes off, peels his coat off and hangs it up, and pads into the little living area. “Ren?” he calls out, unnecessarily, because he spots Ren sitting at the kotatsu immediately, along with—</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hm.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey,” Ren says, and he’s holding a full-sized cat in his arms. It’s a beautiful calico color, and there’s a tiny collar with a little bell hanging around its neck. “How was work?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fine.” Goro makes a face. “Why is that in your arms.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This? It’s a cat.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Goro sighs. “Yes, I know that it’s a cat. My question is why you happen to be holding one.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh. Well—I stopped by the adoption agency on the way home—”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I thought we agreed that doing that isn’t healthy for you?” Goro says, raising an eyebrow.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay, yeah. We did agree on that. But I saw this girl through the window and she looked so lonely and sad and I’ve been wanting to adopt a cat for a while, so—”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ren, no. We can’t have a cat. I can hardly take care of myself. There’s no way that I can also care for a cat.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Awww, c’mon, Goro.” Ren sits the cat in his lap and claps his hands together. “Pleaaaaase? Let’s just give it a try, okay? If it doesn’t work out I can take her back.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Goro makes another face, wrinkling his nose in an almost automatic fashion. He’s not wrinkling it at Ren, necessarily, he’s just wrinkling it… at the world. Or something like that. “Fine,” he says, because Ren is looking at him with those big teacup saucer eyes that he can never say no to. “I just wish you would have told me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, I should have done that. I’m sorry. It was a moment of selfishness, I guess.” Ren scratches the cat on her head. “She’s an older cat. Ten, I think? And apparently she’d been in the shelter for a few years now, and I just… you know how I am with animals.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes, I do know, because you send me approximately six videos of cats and dogs per day. I enjoy when you throw in the occasional bird video.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ren grins at that. “What can I say? I’m a bit of a sucker.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll say.” Goro sets his bag down and sits on the floor next to Ren. The cat looks up at him with a bit of a confused expression on its face. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Me too, little cat, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Goro thinks. “What’s her name?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The name that she came with was Orange Peel. We can change it if you want.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Er… hm.” Goro thinks about it for a minute. Obviously it isn’t the ideal cat name, but if she’s ten years old, it would probably be a pain to try and change it. “No, Orange Peel is fine.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay, cool. Orange Peel it is.” Ren gives Goro a friendly slap on the shoulder. “I was kind of assuming you’d force me to take her back the minute you got home, so I didn’t go out and buy anything. But I’m going to go do that right now, if that sounds all right to you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Goro wonders whether or not he should be hurt by that comment, but then decides that he doesn’t care. “Sure, that’s fine. I don’t know anything about the care of cats, so you’re going to have to do all the work.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, I figured. Wanna hold her?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Um, no.” Goro stands up and picks his bag up. “I have to do work, but I’ll make sure that she doesn’t break anything. That’s about as much as I can do.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ren sets Orange Peel down on the floor and stands up too. “That’s fine. I don’t expect you guys to click right away, especially because you’ve never had a cat before.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And you have?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, I—”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Morgana doesn’t count.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ren shuts his mouth. “Touche. Anyway, I’m going to head out. See you later tonight, yeah? There’s food in the fridge.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay.” Goro nods, and then Ren kisses him goodbye, and soon enough he’s left alone in their little apartment with Orange Peel the calico cat and he has no idea what to do.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Well—he does. Studying. Studying is the thing that he has to do.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So Goro does what he always does and sits back down at the kotatsu after pulling out all of his notebooks and laptop and setting it down on the hard surface. He gets approximately three minutes into his work before Orange Peel starts rubbing her face against his thigh. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Goro nudges her away with the back of his hand, not wanting to be disturbed, but Orange Peel continues her advances. She tries to climb up into his lap, but Goro responds by nudging her away again. He has absolutely no idea how to pick up a cat, so moving her somewhere else is out of the question, but he really wishes that she would leave him alone.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She continues to bother him, and Goro finds himself growing exponentially more irritated by the second. Damn cat. Can’t she see that he’s very busy pretending to do work while simultaneously being distracted by the rhythm game on his phone that Futaba got him into?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This is very important business.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eventually, Orange Peel seems to get the picture, because she walks away from him and leaves Goro alone. Goro puts down the game and actually starts doing his work, and a very small part of him finds himself wishing that the stupid cat would keep bothering him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Not that he would ever admit that aloud, though.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>With Orange Peel gone, though, Goro figures that he might as well get back to focusing on studying. Time blurs pathetically, and eventually the lines of kanji in his law textbook start blurring into one another into one big bumble of lines. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he comes to, his shoulder is being shaken by Ren. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Goro,” Ren says, jostling him further. “Goroooo. Wake up, you’re drooling.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Goro immediately sits up, looking down at the kotatsu. He immediately wipes his mouth and then the table with his sleeve, frowning at the little bit of drool that is, in fact, there. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ugh,” he mumbles, rubbing his face. “I fell asleep. What time is it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Around 10pm,” Ren says. “I got some stuff for Orange Peel. She’s giving you all the attention, isn’t she?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What?” Goro looks to his side and sees Orange Peel hugged up next to his thigh. “Oh.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She likes you,” Ren observes. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know why.” Goro sighs. “I’m not great with animals. I’m… too awkward. I don’t know what they want. And—“</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re going to overthink yourself to death, Goro. It’s just a cat, and she likes you, and that’s all there is to it. She’s not a human, she doesn’t have some complicated reasoning as to why she likes you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Goro’s face falls. He reminds himself that he doesn’t have to be insane about everything. “Right. Well… whatever.” He shovels everything back into his folders, content on giving up for the night, and stands. “I’m tired.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You look tired. You wanna sleep? I need to set up some of this cat stuff first before I join you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“In a bit. I need to eat, and I need to shower.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You do that while I set everything up and then I’ll join you.” Ren kisses Goro on the forehead. “And before you start saying that I shouldn’t be doing the work—I don’t mind. I’m the one who adopted her.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Goro sighs. “Okay,” he says. “All right.”</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>When Goro is finished eating and showering, he steps into his and Ren’s tiny bedroom and sits down on the bed, patting the blankets absentmindedly. He stretches his arms out over his head and flops onto his back, closing his eyes and hoping that the mattress swallows him whole. </p>
<p>
  <span>After a moment, Ren opens the door and steps inside. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey,” he says, dropping something onto the bed next to him. Goro opens his eyes and discovers that it’s Orange Peel, who is trying to crawl on top of Goro’s chest. Goro sits up and the cat very nearly tumbles off of him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey!” Ren repeats, petting Orange Peel on the head in what must be a soothing manner. “She was just trying to be nice.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It makes me nervous,” Goro lies. He’s not really sure why he’s having trouble accepting affection from this cat. “Um… sorry. I—“</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s okay.” Ren smiles softly, always so accepting, so understanding. “I get it. It’s normal! You just met her, it’s normal to feel awkward. Like I said before, don’t think </span>
  <em>
    <span>too </span>
  </em>
  <span>hard about it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Goro smiles back, feeling reassured. “Okay.” He crawls back to the head of the bed and situates himself under the blankets. “I’m going to lay down.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“All right,” Ren says, nodding. “I’m just going to brush my teeth. I’ll be back.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ren disappears into the bathroom and Goro is once again left alone with Orange Peel the cat. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She walks on over to him, plopping herself down in between Goro’s knees and loafing herself into place. Goro doesn’t really know how to go about moving her, so he supposes that she’s just going to sit here until Ren comes back. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why do you like me so much?” he asks Orange Peel. “I’m not a likable person. I’m not someone to be trusted easily. You’d be better being attached to Ren.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Orange Peel looks at him and tilts her head. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m serious,” Goro says, reaching out to pet her head, hesitant. “It’s not good for you to want to hang around me. I think you have the wrong idea about the kind of person I am.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Orange Peel purs. Goro feels stupid. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re just a cat, though,” he mumbles. “You don’t care. You don’t know. I suppose that’s the point. I suppose… it’s a good thing.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Orange Peel yawns. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay. I’m going to stop talking now.” Goro sighs and lays down. “Thank you for listening.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Orange Peel says nothing, and Goro is glad, because he would feel embarrassed if anything he just said was given even a microbe of acknowledgment. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Soon Ren returns to the room and crawls into bed, turning to look at Goro before he turns the lights off. “She’s sitting with you,” he notes. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So she is,” Goro replies, sighing. “I’m realizing that I’m making a bigger deal out of her liking me than is necessary.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, I didn’t want to point it out, but. And I mean—I totally get why you felt weird about it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Goro smiles softly. “I’m having the epiphany that this cat doesn’t really need a reason to like me or hate me,” he says. “She’s just a cat. She doesn’t need a reason.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s true,” Ren says, leaning over to press a kiss onto Goro’s forehead. “Besides, you deserve to get a lot of love. Don’t argue with me on this, because I know that I’m right.” He grins. “I know you better than anybody else.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah, well.” Goro shifts onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. “That’s certainly true.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It is.” Ren wiggles down onto his side, facing Goro, hands tucked underneath his cheek. “Orange Peel over here clearly feels that same way.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mm. She does, yes.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ren reaches out and pets Goro on the head once before turning to his side and flicking the light off. “She’s a smart cat. Goodnight, Goro.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Goodnight, Ren.” Goro pauses for a long moment, debating his next words. “Goodnight, Orange Peel.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ren laughs, Orange Peel meows, and Goro’s face flushes pink. </span>
</p>
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